Pragmata is the latest third-person shooter game from Capcom, but is this sci-fi adventure about a man and his robot worth your time?
Pragmata is a sci-fi shooter where players control two characters working together to survive a robot onslaught on the moon. Players take the role of Hugh, an astronaut whose crew is wiped out by murderous robots unleashed by a rogue AI. He is the last survivor and forced to team up with a robotic child named Diana. At first, Hugh is understandably cautious around her, but the two form a bond and go on to form a highly effective team.
As far as the gameplay goes, players guide Hugh around the map, shooting foes while Diana rides on his back, solving hack puzzles. These two mechanics work in tandem; when Hugh aims down the sights of his gun to blast an enemy, Diana will need to solve a quick hacking puzzle to expose enemy weak points, making combat easier.
It sounds bizarre on paper, but it works incredibly well in practice. The system feels reminiscent of VATs from the Fallout series, but it takes place in real time. If the multitasking element of this puts you off, don’t be; multitasking isn’t your preference, that’s fine-the controls make it simple to learn and fun to master. You’ll be blasting robots and understanding exactly where and how to take them down in no time. The hacking puzzle always feels intuitive and never once gets in the way of the action.
Having a blast
Pragmata rewards exploration between bouts of combat. Image credit: Capcom
Gunplay feels weighty and satisfying, especially when you hit an enemy in a weak spot with the right weapon. It’s deliciously addictive, and the more guns you unlock, the more the moon base Hugh and Diana call home becomes your personal playground. Guns often overheat, which is annoying at first, but its the game’s way of encouraging you to switch weapons, chopping and changing on the fly to become a more lethal combination of man and robot girl. In time, this will feel like second nature, and you’ll not want to just pick one gun and stick to it.
However, you will need to come up with an ideal loadout that works for you and your style. We had the most fun switching between the assault rife and the grenade launcher, which offered the perfect blend of precision, power, and crowd control. But you can carry four weapons at once, so go nuts. While Pragmata is an action shooter, ammo can become scarce, which shouldn’t be a problem for those coming off Resident Evil Requiem. But it does mean players need to make every shot count and not get too trigger happy. This is why the hacking mechanic us so useful, and engaging with it fully helps the action flow nicely, keeping you alive, and with enough ammo to get through a section.
It’s not all blasting robots though, like many of Capcom’s other excellent games, Pragmata rewards exploration and builds lore through files and other collectibles the heroes can seek out. Like it does in Resident Evil, this adds to the world-building and keeps players engaged in ways other than just shooting hordes of enemies.
This is welcome, because as phenomenal as Pragmata looks, after a while one grey corridor looks the same as any other. This isn’t Dead Space or Alien Isolation, where the grim or retro aesthetic is part of the game’s charm, instead, it’s just another futuristic sci-fi setting. The story’s focus is the father/daughter dynamic between Hugh and Diana which does replay some of the same “can an AI consciousness be considered real life?” troupes we’ve seen in other sci-fi adventures. However this one will tug your heartstrings, if you have one.
Babysitting an android
We initially found Diana to be a little bit creepy and the premise awkward, but it soon grew on us, and by the time the credits rolled we were fully invested in the story and cared about both characters. There’s strands of Resident Evil 4 and Ico DNA in Pragmata. Not too much, but enough to appeal to fans of games where you need to care about someone other than your immediate protagonist. Learning about Diana and her origins is one of the biggest drivers of the story, and finding out the truth about her creation is one of the game’s biggest mysteries.
While Pragmata is a narrative driven adventure that took us roughly 13 hours to finish, there is a good chunk of side content and a post game to enjoy, so you’ll have more to do after the main story has ended. We also suspect that a story DLC won’t be out of the question, but Capcom haven’t revealed anything as of yet.
Capcom really is on a roll at the moment, with Resident Evil Requiem and now Pragmata,and while the latter doesn’t quite beat out Requiem, it’s still a solid adventure that worth jumping into once you’re done with Raccoon City. The game reminds us of other Capcom adventures from the Xbox 360 era, such as Vanquish, as the game has an old-school shooter quality that we couldn’t get enough of.
Pragmata is a refreshing third-person shooter than ticks all the boxes we’d like it to tick while also doing something bold and original at the same time.